Doug Henwood wrote:
> How can you be so sure that industrial
> development in Chile would necessarily "decant poverty, rural distress and
> latifundism elsewhere in the 3rd world"?
If it didn't, then soemthing wholly new an unprecedented in the history of
capitalism would have happened and I would pay my dues to the Cato Institute.
But it won't, because of the law of combined and uneven development.
> I'm no fan of elites, enlightened or benighted. I'm talking about different
> strategies of economic development, looking within existing capitalism for
> hints of a better post-capitalism. This is an old Marxist tradition, no?
No, it exactly isn't: it's a USURPATION of Marxist tradition, is what it
is. Marx believed in revolution, not reform.
> Now I know quite well that you can't just separate "models" from real
> societies, with all their political, cultural, and historical details. But
> if we're trying to do political economy, we do have to try to isolate some
> general principles of how capitalist economies work - otherwise, we might
> as well stop talking about capitalism at all, and throw it on the junk heap
> as another discarded master narrative. I look at the experience of Asia,
> compare it with Latin America, and conclude that you need a strong state,
> with strong controls over foreign trade and capital flows, to accomplish
> anything like economic development - whether you're using hardheaded
> standards (like growth and investment levels) or soft ones (like real wage
> growth, literacy and health indicators, and poverty reduction). Of course,
> since it's capitalism, it's still brutal, exploitative, and unstable. But
> tell me, Mark, would you rather be an autoworker in Korea or a berry-picker
> in Chile?
>
Doug, tell me as a Marxist: is it better for the world if people pick
strawberries or make 4x4's?
This is a dilemma I have you to say you address.
Mark
